Exactly. I am not trying to get nasty. I am trying to engage in a debate, and those pesky little facts keep getting dumped for images of five year olds holding their drunken redneck fathers hand gun in the play room...

This is the same tactic that the anti abortion crowd uses.

The whole second Amendment goes like this:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

The problem comes where some people like to put the emphasis on the sentence..........A well regulated militia is all but an impossibility in the current era, especially since every time someone does organize a private militia, the US Government finds some pretense to bust it up or put the members in jail....usually through the goons at the BATF and trumped up weapons violation charges.

Personally, I find the amendment straight forward and clear cut....In order to have a free state, the people must be allowed to keep AND bear arms.

Keep: In other words, I should be able to own, and store my guns in any manner I see fit.

Bear: To actually carry and use my guns if necessary.

It has been decided by the Supreme Court that the police DO NOT have a duty to protect you from crime. They have a duty to catch and help convict criminals.....

Sorry, I would rather be alive and with a gun in my hand than dead, or maimed and hopeful that the police will catch the guy before he hurts someone else.

'There are no atheists in foxholes' isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes."-James Morrow

LibraLabRat wrote:Sorry, I would rather be alive and with a gun in my hand than dead, or maimed and hopeful that the police will catch the guy before he hurts someone else.

Exactly. I'm smart enough that if I had a gun, I wouldn't let ANYONE else near it. just because some (okay, a majority of) people end up letting kids and... other people use guns and have accidents dosen't mean it'll happen to me.

"Don't just learn from your mistakes, learn from others" -Me

daftbeaker wrote:But if I stop bugging you I'll have to go back to arguing with Qwerty about whether beauty is truth and precisely what we both mean by 'purple'

Any statistical increase in the usage of the emoticon since becoming Admin should not be considered significant, meaningful, or otherwise cause for worry.

I guess the point some are trying to convey is that it seems there is a price for the 2nd amendment. I was reviewing some UN statistics and it doesn't look good for the US. Only Brazil and Colombia have more deaths caused by firearms. Normalized by population the US goes down in the list a little bit, still keeping the 1st spot in the 1st world.

It seems that some americans would rather loose a hand than their guns and the amendment only reinforces that behavior.

Is there less crime because of firearms? Who knows, all statistics from all sides are tainted, also there isn't a realistic way to correlate the data.

Would less homicides happen if there were less guns? Perhaps, but perhaps also people would like to carry knives as a replacement so there is no way to know.

Does it really make any difference to have guns to prevent dictatorship? It might. How likely is that dictatorship? Who knows.

IMO this whole discussion is pointless.

Edit: libra or one of the mods, could you please do something about the very long link on the 3rd page *hint* tinyurl *hint*. It is very unconfortable to read the page because of that.

NicolÃ¡s
_________________
Violence is the diplomacy of the incompetent.Hari SeldonFrom Isaac Asimov's Foundation series

There is another insidious argument going the rounds, it is the "junk gun" tirade.

One of my favorite guns is a Hi Point C9 9mm semiauto handgun. It is built like an old Dodge Truck, heavy and thick, but short and compact. I bought it for under 200 bucks with the holster, and a big box of FMJ ammo. Some folks would get rid of such inexpensive handguns by claiming that these are used in a disproportionately large number of crimes....but there is a reason for it.

Large crime syndicate gangs in Chicago, New York, and LA send a "clean" buyer south to Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, or another state with less gun regulation to buy several of these guns, and then they are distributed for illegal purposes, and they enter the black market.

So, these guns get used more in crimes than more expensive guns. Sounds like a reason to ban them outright, right?

Wrong.

The people who often need an inexpensive and reliable handgun the most are those who live in high crime areas. They are most likely to be single mothers, and other people who are on fixed incomes like old people. These are also a disproportionately high number of crime victims.

'There are no atheists in foxholes' isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes."-James Morrow

Rasti wrote:How about a 3 to 5 dollar charge per bullet for the non-rifle sizes? Urban gunfire is rarely NOT a handgun.

two words:
Sawn off.

the majority of explosive gun crime in NZ is likely to be carried out by people with sawn off weapons. Most commonly these things are a side by side shotgun with the stock greatly reduced (often to pistol grip) and and a reduced barrell length (typically about 30-40cm). they are absolutely piss useless for anything execpt crime as the barrells are often deformed in the cutting process, making hten unreliable for shot patterns.

here is the kicker though, despite NZ have relatively though firearms legislation (more later) there is a sufficent flow of arms into criminal hands as most farms have at least 2 shotguns per property (heck at one stage we had 3, and we are urban) and sundry other guns (.22, .303).

NZ gun control ( http://www.police.govt.nz/service/firearms/ )
basically is you can get a licence to own a gun from age 16 (but you must be supervised) or 18 after a background check. you then get different 'endorcements' for gun types, and these have a higher level of checking e.g. a pistol endorcement os generally only issued to people who are members of a pistol club. some gun types are VERY hard to get get endorcements for e.g. military style semiautomatics (even if it is for airguns).
then there is this as well (direct quote):
* You must never put a firearm where a child could reach it
* You must store firearms and ammunition separate or disable the firearms, or both
* You must keep your firearms unloaded and locked away in a cupboard or storeroom
the most recent accidental firearms discharge was a hunter who brock the first of those.

as for the 'defence' argument for firearms ownership, I am reasonably sure that criminals will come prepared for, and use force, needed in a crime. while for some crimes a gun vs. other weapon will be immaterial in the outcome of the crime (e.g. a knife to the neck vs. a gun to the head in a rape) if the offender has a weapon that makes it easier to cause harm will lead to an increase in harm for each case. the majority of home enteries in NZ are done by unarmed crims, only the most drug fucked take firearms, due to the fact: guns in crime makes it much worse if you are caught; guns are hard to get; anyone in the house is very unlikely to be able to respond in kind.

I do not believe that the second ammendment allows for the right to own a gun for protection from other private citizens. This is no reflection on whether or not I think that right should exist, just a reflection on my ability to read and understand words. I don't interpret the constitution to say what I think it should say, I interpret it to say what I think words in English mean.

I think guns are dangerous, and I think they are designed to be dangerous. I therefore think it should be harder for any jackass off the street to get one.

I think guns are a very big responsibility, and therefore I think that anyone who owns one should be held to a high standard of responsibility, higher than those that already exist.

I don't think any of the problems people think are solved by guns actually ARE solved by guns, and therefore, by turning to guns as a solution, we solve nothing. I believe this is an effective red herring designed by the gun industry to make money, as most red herrings designed by some industry or another are.

I believe the majority of the illegal guns on the street come from other parts of THIS country where they are easier to buy. Therefore, I believe gun regulations should be made federal. Most of the cops in NY who are shot by a gun in NY are shot by a gun, while owned illegally in NY, was purchased legally in Georgia.

The argument that 'bad people own guns, so make it easier for me to own a gun so I can shoot bad people' is counter to pretty much everything I consider important to society. I don't see it as a compelling argument, just proof that someone feels violence is enough of an answer for them.

Those are my opinions. If someone wants to discuss them, from this point on, I'm only going to reply to direct responses that appear WITH the direct quote from this post. No inferences on what I mean will be acknowledged, and no lumping of me with any other school of thought will be acknowledged. If someone wants to discuss what I said, they have to actually discuss what I said.

Oh, and for the record; references or suggestions that I live in the Emerald City or Middle Earth are insulting, and completely false. I've lived almost my entire life in or directly outside of NYC, and the time I wasn't in NYC, I was living in New Orleans, or Delhi, NY. For those of you who are unfamiliar with these areas, NYC has had (until recently) a very high crime rate, New Orleans was (until recently) the murder capital of the country, and I think it's still the rape capital of the country, and Delhi, NY was a tiny hick town where every single person hunted, owned multiple firearms, and kept most of them in the back of their pick-up. I also have a close friend who is NYPD, and I've known more people who've died from cancer and drunk-driving than guns. I don't believe the need to own a gun for personal protection is an objective thing, I believe it is subjective, and highly reliant on a particular type of mindset. The suggestion that there's something wrong with me because I'm not so scared of the world that I have to arm myself in order to leave my home is disgusting, and the suggestion that the world IS that dangerous is an OPINION, not a fact.

Furthermore, snide comments about the world I live in are a sign to me that the person making them isn't actually interested in honest conversation, but rather interested in distracting genuine debate and turning it into nonsense, and I'll take further comments of that kind as indication that genuine debate is over.

True terror lies in the futility of human existence.

Malcolm Reynolds is my co-pilot.

"The only freedom deserving the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest." - John Stuart Mill

We used to have a huge fawn colored Doberman who was gun shy. Cured him of this with bottle rockets and another dobe who was not gun shy. He watched the other dog go nuts chasing and trying to catch those rockets and in a very short while he decided he wanted to do that too. This is not the wisest way to train a dog as there is always the occasional rocket that they catch. Dunno how we managed to keep them all healthy, when the rockets were caught they blew up in their mouths. (Please don't call the humane society on me!)
In the end, the fawn dobe learned that guns were nothing to fear. In fact he learned it too well as after that, any time we wanted to do a little target practice he'd go for the gun. Had to keep him shut in the house when the guns were out. I always wondered what he would have done faced with an armed bad guy.
Dunno what this has to do with gun control but it's a gun thread and this is a gun story.

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This is Bunny.
Bunny, as cute and cuddley as he may appear, is bent on world domination.
To achieve this he has decided to start by taking over teh intarweb, a step towards his ultimate goal.
To help him complete his quest and therefore ensure bunny domination, copy and paste him into your sig

you're at home, sleeping, everythings good. suddenly, you hear a crash. you wake up, and find a man in your room, with a gun, and a ski mask. he's going through your jewlery or valuables. he immidiately turns and points the gun at you, ready to shoot. he's nervous and shaking.

what do you do/wish you had?

daftbeaker wrote:But if I stop bugging you I'll have to go back to arguing with Qwerty about whether beauty is truth and precisely what we both mean by 'purple'

Any statistical increase in the usage of the emoticon since becoming Admin should not be considered significant, meaningful, or otherwise cause for worry.

"The only freedom deserving the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest." - John Stuart Mill

Auntie Dee Dee wrote:Owning a sawn off shotgun will land you in jail in most places.

I agree but if one is lets say doing armed robbery, will a sawn off increase the penalty or will it mearly be a 'hand guns are too costly, as I am breaking the law anyway(sawing sounds)'?(remember this was from increasing the cost of hand-gun ammo)

LibraLabRat wrote:I love those stories......

I am assuming that telling rebutal was against my arguement about force esculation?

and what is more likely to make a shaky armed offender jump?
you reaching out of sight (how many people actually sleep with their guns in their hands?{minds out of gutter there everyone})
you quitely raising your hands and saying 'take what you need and get out'

again though that eg is a good one where there a great increase in damage potential with firearms over say a knife

one thing I have not seen argued is
'even if, with gun controls, it is harder to get access to firearms what do we do about the guns in circulation now?'

Alarm system. Even if it is in perfect working order, the police or alarm company will call you and ask you if you are ok. If you are unable to answer the phone, I guess they send the police to your place. Not a risk I want to take.

I do not sleep with a gun in my hand. I sleep with one on the bedside table. I do not keep a round in the chamber, but I do keep a loaded magazine in it. It would take me maybe a half a second to rack a round, and that sound is usually enough to let any would be criminal think twice.

Now, if some one is just trying to steal my tv, I am not going to shoot him. Because even though the guy was in my house, I broke one of the fundamental rules of armed self defense: Meet force with enough like force to neutralize the threat.

Now, if the guy has a bat, crowbar, or some other blunt object, I will point the gun at him, request he gets down on his stomach, ect. IF he desists and comes towards me anyway, I am sending him to whatever afterlife he believes in.....

If you would like the full set of rules on armed engagement, just ask.

There are not large numbers of people running around crying "self defense" and getting away with murder. Ask any cop, it is hard to prove a justified shooting.

'There are no atheists in foxholes' isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes."-James Morrow